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uTorrent for Mac beta officially released


Way back in June of 2007, rumors of a beta version of uTorrent for the Mac first started making waves. For the uninitiated, uTorrent is a super-lightweight BitTorrent client which is widely considered the best in the business. Sadly, it has remained a Windows-only option. A few months ago, an alpha version was leaked (appropriately, on a BitTorrent tracker), but it was alpha, buggy and had a minimal UI (even by uTorrent standards).

Today, uTorrent has officially released its first Mac beta for Intel Macs running OS X 10.5 Leopard. It doesn't have all the features of its Windows counterpart (it's missing the RSS downloader, for instance) but it has a nice interface and the signature uTorrent low-memory footprint.

The only real question will be, is this too little too late? When uTorrent for the Mac was first announced 18 months ago, the BitTorrent client landscape was very different. Transmission was still new and buggy and Vuze (nee Azureus) suffered from significant problems with Tiger and Java. Today, Transmission is a full featured client and Vuze, although still a memory hog, is signicantly faster and more stable in Leopard.

This doesn't mean that it isn't great to finally have uTorrent for OS X -- it just means that the client will need to do more than just exist to get many users to switch over.

uTorrent for Mac is free. It is beta software and it will have bugs, but it is available now.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!



Way back in June of 2007, rumors of a beta version of uTorrent for the Mac first started making waves. For the uninitiated, uTorrent is a...
 

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SD

I updated to Transmission 1.42 two days ago, and it's not working. It can't find peers, and won't download a thing, including Pirate Bay top 100 torrents.

Really disappointing since it used to be brilliant in almost every way. I've downgraded to 1.40, but I'm getting inconsistent and unbelievably crap speeds. (0.7kb/s, anyone?)

Downloaded uTorrent beta today, and whilst it's not as attractive, it's working.


December 28 2008 at 7:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
john

sorry but how do i download utorrent for mac from here

December 26 2008 at 10:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Supreme

The uTorrent for Mac gets mad props from me since The learning curve is minimal, its simple to use, it has a clean interface, and It works fast. I think those responsible for the building of these "for the people" P2P apps deserve medals/awards/honors/recignition and financial compensation. I thought napster and morpheus was cool but "uTorrent and the P2P's of today rule" as far as I'm concerned. See you netizens on the web.
We are living in the best of times.

December 05 2008 at 3:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
colouroflight

So I dumped Transmission thinking that Mac µTorrent would have all of the options and configurability of its Windows counterpart. Lo and behold, it's just as watered-down as Transmission.

Can't add multiple trackers, can't set lazy bitfield or any number of other options to get around ISP traffic filters, etc.

It's a sad day when Azureus is the best option.

November 29 2008 at 5:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
colouroflight

Yea, but the software is better (i.e. more full-featured).

µTorrent is the only thing I miss about Windows. Time to dump Transmission!

November 28 2008 at 11:10 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
simon

I have used almost all of the torrent clients available for mac (Tomato, Vuze, Trans., Bits on Wheels, etc.) and have had parallels almost solely for uTorrent, but then Transmission started to improve and then I stuck with it. I downloaded uTorrent yesterday for interest sake and it takes up 90+% of my processor (Macbook), so if they don't get this together, I might just go back to old reliable (Trans.). Good so far though for uT.

November 27 2008 at 7:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
vik

tomato, tomaato

November 27 2008 at 5:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ShiggyMozart

Okay I'd like to take part of my rant back on page 2:

This beta is available to anyone, but you have to manually visit http://mac.utorrent.com/beta.

If you were to click on the "Mac version coming soon" link that's on the main site you'd be directed to the form where you'd enter your email address, thus spitting at you that URL above.

With that said, I've yet to use it more than my initial test, though it's already really well polished for what features are included in this beta.

November 27 2008 at 3:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
W.

Transmission has a major flaw. That is how it handles retries, giving false stats. Many torrent sites that require a ratio have banned Transmission and will ban you if you're caught using it.

µTorrent is the gold standard, and is considerable faster. Stop living in the past people.

November 27 2008 at 3:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to W.'s comment
Pabby

I agree. uTorrent is the gold standard and it's fantastic to have it for Mac now as well.

Now if only Apple would fix their damn wireless gear (namely AEBS and Time Capsule) not to crap out after 10 minutes torrenting. It's ridiculous to spend so much and the equipment can't even handle Bittorrent.

November 27 2008 at 3:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Christina Warren

That's not really true anymore. Only one private tracker I use doesn't accept transmission 1.4x but it takes 1.3x. The tracker issue was resolved months ago. uTorrent is the defininitive windows program, but unless the mac version can reach feature parity, it won't necessarily be that way.

November 27 2008 at 4:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
vicont

Even though I waited for uTorrent for Mac, now once it's released I can't find any true reason to switch to if from Transmission. It has nice interface, but Transmission has all the features I already need, while uTorrent has to improve a lot.

November 27 2008 at 1:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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